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Students and parents talk Walnut Hills' entrance exam: 'It's an emotional roller coaster'

Walnut
Zack Carreon
/
WVXU
Walnut Hills High School was established in 1895.

There's a lot to say about Cincinnati Public's Walnut Hills High School. The college-preparatory school boasts an impressive 99% graduation rate; far exceeds Ohio Department of Education & Workforce standards with an overall 5-star rating; and has been ranked as the No. 1 public high school in Ohio by U.S. News & World Report.

Walnut Hills' academic achievements far exceed that of many other public schools in the district, making it a desirable landing spot for many students looking to get ahead academically and pursue higher education.

But despite Walnut Hills being a public school, not every Cincinnati student can attend. Students are required to take an entrance exam before becoming eligible for admission, and which students do well enough on that test to get in has some parents questioning the level of equity within Cincinnati Public Schools.

Ahead of the final day to take the Walnut Hills Entrance Exam (WHEE) for students looking to enroll in fall 2025, WVXU spoke to parents and students from around the district to hear their thoughts about the school's admission process and what they think the school district could do differently to give every student in Cincinnati Public Schools access to a high-quality high school education.

The entrance exam

As a school for students in grades 7-12, prospective students who want to attend Walnut Hills typically start preparing for the entrance exam while in elementary school.

Although the school district refers to the test as the WHEE, CPS uses the Iowa Assessment, a widely used multiple-choice achievement test that judges students based on their skills in reading, vocabulary, math, and computation.

Khendal Love, a 10th-grader, recalls what it was like at Woodford Academy preparing for the exam.

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"A lot of our work had to do with the test," Love said about her classes. "The first time I took it was in the 6th grade because it was mandatory. And I didn't pass, so I really wanted to take it again, and I didn't pass again, and at that point, I just kept taking the test and I wasn't passing."

Khendal's mother, Lorren Jones, describes her daughter as an intelligent kid who always did well in the classroom, though she sometimes struggled on big tests. She says many of her daughter's classmates had their sights set on Walnut Hills, and family members wanted her to attend the school too, so there was a lot of pressure to pass the WHEE. After three failures, Jones said the pressure eventually became too much.

"It was an emotional rollercoaster," Jones told WVXU. "She was in tears because the expectation was Walnut."

After briefly enrolling at Shroder High School, Khendal opted to take an EdChoice voucher to attend the private Cincinnati Waldorf School in Mariemonet, which she's grown to love. She says if she could talk to her younger self, she'd tell her one test score doesn't define her.

"You're fine where you're at and you can still excel and do great somewhere else," she said.

Jones says her daughter's story isn't unique. As a paraprofessional at Cincinnati Public Schools, Jones says she sees inequities across the district's elementary schools which can make getting into Walnut Hills a bigger challenge for many young CPS students who don't have extensive financial resources, parental support, or the same elementary education as other more affluent students.

"The way they have it now just is not working. It doesn't give everybody a fair shot to a good education. It just doesn't," she said. "You have to be in the right area, you have to have the right amount of money, or you have to know the right people and a lot of us just don't."

WVXU made repeated requests over several weeks to interview the leadership at Walnut Hills High School about the entrance exam, academic equity, and student demographics but they did not agree to an interview before this article's release.

Who goes to Walnut Hills?

Recent data from the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce shows a stark contrast between the racial and economic makeup of the overall student population of Cincinnati Public Schools and the student population of its top schools.

Around 72% of CPS students are Black or Hispanic, and close to 20% are white. More than 85% of all the district's students are considered economically disadvantaged.

LISTEN: Ohio's poorest performing schools could close under proposed bill

At Walnut Hills High School, close to 60% of students are white, while 25% are Black or Hispanic. Twenty-six percent of Walnut students are considered economically disadvantaged.

A Walnut Hills flag waves in the wind outside the school
Zack Carreon
/
WVXU
A Walnut Hills flag waves in the wind outside the school

'The only decent school'

A parent with students attending Walnut Hills spoke to WVXU under the condition of anonymity. They say Walnut is pitched as the best and, in some cases, the only quality public high school option to parents with students at elementary schools like Hyde Park and Kilgour.

They say that puts pressure on parents who can afford it to give their kids the best possible chance of testing in. That means paying for private tutors and courses intended to help students pass the WHEE, something many CPS families don't have the resources to pay for. This elementary-level academic arms race can take families outside the orbit of Walnut Hills by surprise.

Casey Patterson is one such parent. She teaches preschool at Rising Stars @ Vine and has children attending schools in CPS. Her family moved to Cincinnati about 10 years ago from a military town in North Carolina. In her previous small school district, students only had one option for where to attend high school. The idea of magnet schools and high school entrance exams was foreign to her, so when her family moved into a house down the street from Walnut Hills High School and heard from her neighbors about the school, she assumed that's where her kids would end up when they got older.

"We as parents thought, 'Oh, our kids will go to Walnut. No big deal.' " she said.

Patterson says she wasn't familiar with all the high school options within CPS and felt pressured into enrolling her oldest daughter at the prep school even if it wasn't the best fit.

"We probably were being the parents that weren't really asking her," she told WVXU. "We were just saying, 'Yup, you're going to go to Walnut' because at that time I thought, 'Well, that's the only decent school in the area.' That's what I was told by a lot of people. Now I know that's not true."

Today, none of her kids go to Walnut Hills. Due to the large size of Walnut, her daughter chose to enroll at the smaller Spencer Center for Gifted and Exceptional Students. Patterson says Spencer Center still wasn't a great fit for her daughter, so she tried out some other schools before landing on Cincinnati Public's virtual academy.

RELATED: CPS considers new virtual school for students learning English

Patterson says the digital school was just what her daughter was looking for, and a recent autism diagnosis explained why her daughter struggled with larger classroom settings.

She wished she'd known about the different options at CPS sooner and says the district could do more to encourage families to explore those options before putting all their energy into Walnut.

"I don't know that the kids in Hyde Park are hearing about all the other high schools," Patterson said. "I know the parents aren't."

Additionally, she'd like to see the district invest in improving the educational opportunities at elementary schools in the city's underserved neighborhoods. While Walnut Hills might be the "only" option for students in the Hyde Park area, in other parts of Cincinnati a student passing the entrance exam seems to be too rare of an occurrence.

"It was a big, huge deal if a kid got into Walnut," Patterson said. "These kids should have the chance to do these things too. And why aren't our kids at these elementary schools making the scores to get into Walnut?"

Zack Carreon is Education reporter for WVXU, covering local school districts and higher education in the Tri-State area.